Editor’s Note: Next week marks Catholic Schools Week, a national celebration of the Catholic Church’s centuries-old commitment to intellectual and faith formation. In this week’s blog, Tom Peri, NDP science teacher, offers his reflections on being a life-long Catholic educator.
Picture this………September 1975, standing in front of his first class ever is a new teacher, just three months out of college. He was determined not to allow the smell of his fear to reach the nostrils of the 28 sophomores seated before him, he was not successful. That is the only recollection I have of the first day of my teaching career. I suspect those students remember even less.
Teaching is a marvelous way to spend a year or 40 (and counting). It is a vocation to fall in love with and every day brings a new surprise and new insights. The irony and the beauty of being a teacher is that you never stop learning. I have learned some lessons and almost every one of the really important ones come from my students. In that regard I have had a charmed career – my students have been among my very best teachers.
I have worked exclusively in Catholic schools: one all-boys, four co-ed, and one all-girls. I have been called Dean of Students, Assistant Principal for Student Affairs, and Principal twice. In all those years, regardless of my title, I have also taught biology.
When I started the latest technology was colored chalk. If that 1975 teacher could walk into our Science Lab 4 today he would think he was on the starship Enterprise. But as exciting as the changes have been, what I love most of all about Catholic education are the things that haven’t changed and in that, any one of my 100+ NDP teacher colleagues could finish this blog equally well. When I walk in to a class today, I have the privilege of working with students as complete persons, each with talents and foibles, grace and pratfalls, great humor and remarkable seriousness, leaders who follow and followers who lead. We are engaged in a grand collaboration involving much more than biological vocabulary or MBAs.